It’s time to embrace China’s mixed reality market

2016 was a rocky year for the VR/AR industry worldwide as consumer adoption failed to live up to what turned out to be inflated forecasts. China, in particular, seemed to go through a rude awakening with 90 percent of its hardware startups going bust. Yet while we in the West have in general adjusted to a more stable and sober baseline by which to navigate our expectations along the long “hype cycle” winter, we find that the Asian juggernaut has doubled-down.

In March, for instance, HTC and the Shenzhen Government announced their teaming up to form a new $158 million VR/AR fund, called the Premier Fund. The newly forged fund will work closely with the two pre-seed funds, the VRVCA and HTC’s Vive X, to source ventures of all varieties. Last month, as well, doors opened to China’s first VR theme park (or town), coined the “Oriental Science Fiction Valley”. The fruit of roughly $500 million in investment, the park spans 330 acres (134 hectares) in Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province, offering 35 different VR attractions.